Mr. Levine, who is usually based in Atlanta, Ga., is the star of a new Broadway-style production based on the classic 16th-century Chinese tale “Journey to the West.” The show, called “Da Meng Shen Hou” (“Big Dream Magical Monkey”) in Chinese and “Monkey King: A Broadway-Style Musical” in English, will premiere in Beijing Monday night.

The show is a creative take on Beijing opera by way of the Big Apple, with hip-hop dancing, gospel music and a love story mixed in with kung-fu fighting, acrobatics, and the occasional gong.

The Monkey King, known in Chinese as Sun Wukong, was the “first super-hero in literature, before Superman, Batman and Spiderman,” says producer and director Tony Stimac.

In the original story, known by every Chinese child, the powerful monkey has supernatural powers and is imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha. A villainous rogue, he gets into battles with the Dragon King, the Jade Emperor and other powerful beings.

The current production is based on the first seven chapters of the 100-chapter “Journey to the West,” in which the Monkey King acts “like a spoiled child,” says Mr. Stimac. “He has all this power but none of the maturity to temper his power. Whenever anybody gets in his way he just kills them.”

The play took a Broadway-style approach.

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There are certain additions, though, that Chinese audiences might not be familiar with. For instance, the Monkey King meets a girl – definitely not part of the original version.

For the play to have what Mr. Stimac thinks of as a Broadway-style approach, the creators had to find a way to make the Monkey King likeable and to bring in characters an audience could relate to. In one song, the Dragon King and his wife bicker about throwing away clutter.

In the first song, the Monkey King announces he “wants to pull the tiger’s tale,” says Mr. Stimac. “He wants to go on an adventure, conquer the world. But by the end, he realizes it’s good to have a family, good to be at home. That’s the arc we invented.”

Mr. Stimac, who splits his time between Beijing and Nyack, N.Y., is a veteran of Broadway and off-Broadway musical theater. In 2011 he brought the musical, “The Joker’s Game,” to China, an original story set in the Tang dynasty with a magician, magic tricks, and star-crossed lovers. The Monkey King was written by the Broadway musical writing team of James Racheff (“Oh, Kay”) and Louis St. Louis (“Grease” and “Smokey Joe’s Café”), the show also brings in choreographer Bubba Carr (“So You Think You Can Dance”).

There were a few bumps along the road in the process to bring the show to fruition. Language was one. The play was written in English, and slowly reworked into Chinese, except for Mr. Levine, who says most of his lines in English. The result is a clever mixture of some songs in Chinese, others with some English, with subtitles for both languages.

A second issue was the question of whether Chinese audiences would be willing to pay to see their classics given a hip-hop, gospel, belting-to-the-rafters treatment. Audiences in Beijing are used to English-language imports, with recent performances of “Man of La Mancha” and “Guys and Dolls,” along with Mandarin-language versions of Broadway shows like “Into the Woods” and, in Shanghai, “Avenue Q.”

Casting the show was also challenge, since China has no longstanding musical-theater tradition. Most musical theater requires “triple threat” actors who can act, dance, and sing. For this cast, the producers turned to some of China’s best hip-hop dancers, added seven Korean actors, and found Mr. Levine. One standout performer is a Korean woman named Yoon Hee Young, who sings the play’s show-stopping number, “He’s Got to Go,” with a gospel-inflected delivery straight out of a Sunday church choir.

And then there was the challenge of how a muscular, tattooed black American man could pull off a character that is so closely associated with Chinese culture. Mr. Levine says the show was deliberately created around him. “They were looking for a monkey king before they delved into the creative process,” he says. “They wanted to create it around who they cast.”

Plus, since he’s always been teased about his big ears, he says he finally has a role that works. “They said I looked the part. I am perfectly fine with it,” says Mr. Levine, who met Mr. Stimac through the show’s choreographer, Bubba Carr.

When they cast Mr. Levine, he was told he was “perfect” for the part, says Mr. Stimac. “I told him, if he does this he will become, overnight, the most famous actor in China.”

Another theme that’s clearly not part of the classic story is a metaphor equating the monkeys with the people of China “who have persevered from every obstacle and challenge,” says Mr. Stimac. “And heaven is the West, trying to tell China for 300 years what to do.”

But now that China is powerful, the lesson is that China, like the Monkey King, has to learn how to use that power in the world, he says.

How Chinese audiences react is an open question. During Mr. Stimac’s previous China production, “The Joker’s Game,” audience members “talked constantly, videoed, went back and forth to the bathroom,” he says. “It was like doing a show in chaos.”

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